


Landing On Your Feet

by missbeizy



Series: Kitty!Kurt [1]
Category: Glee
Genre: AU, Cat/Human Hybrids, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Size Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 07:47:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbeizy/pseuds/missbeizy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kitty!Kurt/human!Blaine.  Warnings for: sex during “heat”, brief mentions of past abuse, brief size kink, brief conception kink (no actual conception).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Landing On Your Feet

Blaine is buying champagne when Rachel calls. The liquor store is crowded; he's worried that if he puts his bottles down to answer her they'll be grabbed up before he has a chance to defend them, so he cradles his phone between his jaw and shoulder and taps the accept button with his chin.

"You would not believe the acrobatics that I just managed to answer you with my face," he says.

"You are amazing." She pauses. "Dare I ask?"

He laughs. It wouldn't be the first time that she's interrupted him in the middle of something that had required the full dedication of all of his limbs. "I'm making a very hasty champagne purchase. Competition is fierce. Last minute party invitation."

"Oh, do tell."

"Nothing personal, just a director who I've been trying to get face time with." He frowns. "I could try and swing the plus one angle if you've changed your mind about staying home with the in-laws.”

"No, thank you, darling. This is a business call, unfortunately. I didn't want to bother you this close to the holiday, but I'm out of options. We had a stray dropped off five minutes before closing and I can't take him. Howard's parents are using the spare bedroom and his father is terribly allergic. Every single one of my other fosters are either out of town, hosting guests, or celebrating already."

_Shit._

Blaine sighs, getting in line with his champagne. A fierce looking woman eyes his bottles with a lustful glint in her eye and he clutches them tighter. "What's the situation? I will be out tomorrow night and if he's in bad shape—"

"Nothing unusual. Caught rooting through a restaurant's dumpster. Not in bad shape, really, just a little thin—no chip, no tags, no lab tattoo so he's a wilderness breed. Probably mid-twenties judging by the wear. Real pretty, actually, and in no way feral."

The freezing winter air whips Blaine's overcoat around his knees as he walks down the sidewalk with his purchase in a brown paper bag against his hip. "So he'd be fine alone for a few hours? Is he talking?"

"I got him to tell me his name and repeat mine," she says.

"I don't want to confuse him, disappearing for hours before he's settled."

"He's really calm. I wouldn't worry about it."

Blaine sighs. He had just adopted out his last foster not days before, and even though he is always willing to take another, especially during the colder months, he has enjoyed the quiet and not having to manage a feeding and exercise schedule on top of his rehearsals and performances. But that's why he's a hybrid foster to begin with—he has the space, the money, and the desire to help.

"I'll swing by and pick him up. Just make sure he's dressed warm, okay?"

"You are the best, Blaine Anderson."

"That's what they tell me."

 

*

 

The cat hybrid's name is Kurt.

He's sitting neatly on his haunches when Blaine sees him for the first time, the pale beige of his clubbed tail twitching back and forth across the linoleum floor of the clinic's lobby. He's pale all over, sporting a dense beige coat that bleeds into soft milky skin from his extremities inward, topped off by a pair of faintly pointed ears tufted with dark brown. He has to die for blue-green eyes and a strong build that makes Blaine think that if he is a wilderness breed, he had been extraordinarily lucky in his genetics.

His dark whiskers twitch at Blaine's approach.

Rachel, already dressed in her outerwear, smiles and hugs Blaine and hands over Kurt's lead. "I owe you one. Lock up on your way out?"

Blaine's car is fitted out for hybrid transport, so his only concern is making sure that Kurt is properly dressed and leashed. Hybrids don't require shoes or gloves—their thick-skinned, furred paw-like feet and hands can stand up to the elements—but their body cores and heads are not quite sufficiently padded. Blaine makes sure that the hat and coat that Kurt is wearing are tight against his fur, then makes sure that his lead is properly attached to the collar around his neck.

"Yep. Have a happy new year if I don't talk to you."

"You too!"

And they're alone. The clinic is dark except for a single lamp still turned on in the waiting area.

Blaine sits back on his heels, crouched in front of Kurt, and smiles.

"Did Rachel explain where we're going, Kurt?" he asks.

Kurt blinks. His pale ears twitch against the holes cut into the brown, wool winter hat that he's wearing, and for a moment he looks like an overgrown kitten shoved into a grownup's outerwear, and Blaine's smile widens.

Hybrids are no less intelligent than humans, but they lack a broader language expression, so Blaine isn't surprised when Kurt just nods, his ears swiveling momentarily back against his head.

"It'll be nice and warm and we'll get you some dinner, no worries."

He leads a hesitant Kurt out onto the sidewalk and into the back of his car, then latches the metal screen between the two halves of the car shut. This gate as well as a quick check to make sure that Kurt's claws have been filed blunt are simple but necessary precautions—Blaine has fostered hybrids who'd seemed as docile as house cats and then almost clawed his face off during the car ride home.

When they arrive, he lets Kurt take his time with every step. New places are worrying for hybrids, especially cats who can be very picky, so Blaine lets him sniff and stop every few feet. There isn't much space between the sidewalk and the porch, so it doesn't take long, even with patience. He's glad for that; he wants to get away from the cold almost as much as he wants Kurt to settle down for the night.

 

*

 

The change that occurs when Kurt feels the warmth of Blaine's home is instant and obvious—his pupils dilate, his ears point to the ceiling, and his pale fur bristles and stands on end. The muscles that make up his half-human, half-cat face go soft, enhancing the way that his human mouth slopes into his pink cat nose and his angular but forward facing human eyes. He has pale brown eyebrows and whiskers and the faintest hint of a ruff along his jaw, all of which quiver with pleasure at the heat.

"Better, huh?" Blaine asks, smiling as he separates the lead and the collar. Kurt had been chipped at the clinic—the collar serves no purpose beyond transportation—and so Blaine helps him out of the collar, hat, and coat.

Properly disrobed, Kurt stands up on his hind legs, which are bent at a slightly odd angle but still straight limbed enough to balance similarly to human legs. Blaine inhales, taking a step back; Kurt is taller than him by an inch and a half or maybe even two, and when he stands at full height the width of his shoulders and the length of his body is shockingly impressive and impressively masculine.

He's pale fur and flesh beneath the coat, though there's a faint speckling of brown along his groin, and a thick sheath between his legs that hides his genitalia entirely. When he's down to just fur and skin, he fluffs up, the muscles of his arms and thighs cording up under a step or two.

"Better," he announces.

Blaine stares at him. His voice is high-pitched, almost breathy, rather the opposite of what Blaine had expected.

"Blaine Anderson?" he asks, tilting his head.

"Uh," Blaine replies, still enthralled. "Yes. Blaine."

"Rachel said Blaine."

"Yes, that's right." Blaine clears his throat. He can't stop staring. Kurt is quite possibly the most beautiful cat hybrid that he has ever seen.

Kurt's mouth twitches up at the right corner. "Food, Blaine?" He blinks. "Please."

"Food, yes," Blaine blurts, hurrying into the kitchen. "Nothing complicated on such short notice, I'm afraid, but is chicken okay? Or maybe fish?"

Kurt follows him, paw pads whispering over the tile. He falls naturally into a crouch beside Blaine, sniffing curiously when Blaine takes a dish out of the refrigerator.

"Chicken, yes."

"Not a fan of tuna?"

Kurt narrows his eyes and wrinkles his nose. "Chicken, please."

"Gotcha," Blaine says, smiling, and shreds a few pieces of cold chicken. He adds a handful of protein pellets—the hybrid equivalent of a protein bar plus vitamins—and sets the plate in Kurt's wide, long hands, along with a bowl of water which he puts down next to Kurt's hip. Most hybrids prefer to crouch while eating with their hands, and Kurt seems no different in that regard. Blaine drinks a bottle of vegetable juice at the breakfast bar and waits for him to finish.

He smiles when he hears Kurt purr softly through the meal.

"The food at the clinic isn't that great, I know," he says.

"Garbage food is bad, too," Kurt says, ears flickering.

Blaine nods, frowning. "How long were you—on your own?" Quietly, he flips open the manila folder that holds Kurt's paperwork. It's rather blank. They hadn't had time to get anything out of him as they normally would before handing him off to a foster.

"As long as it's been cold," Kurt says, shrugging. "Better than before." He finishes the food, half of the water, and then cleans his paws and face before adding, "Mean people before."

Blaine has heard it before, so many times. But at least they'd managed to get to Kurt before any real physical damage had been done—at least, visible damage. He seems relatively healthy and unaffected by the exposure.

"I have a nice comfortable room where you can sleep," he says, eyes drawn sideways yet again when Kurt stands on his hind legs.

"Just need warm and dry," Kurt replies, looking sleepy from the food.

Blaine leads him to the spare room, shows him the piles of soft blankets and pillows, the place where he can go to the bathroom (a rather large sandbox surrounded by a privacy curtain), the scratching post, the things he can chew if he gets anxious—it's much like any array of cat toys and tools, only human-sized and more durable. The blanket nest is big enough to hold a hybrid ever bigger than Kurt and it's a good thing, too, because after he rolls around in it a few dozens times until it is to his liking Blaine notes that anything smaller would not have done.

"You sleep here, too?" he asks, eyelids rising and falling slowly.

What an odd request. But Blaine doesn't mind. "I could stay until you fall asleep?"

"Please, yes. Blaine."

He reclines against the edge of the blanket and pillow mound, smiling when he feels Kurt's blunted claws and soft paw pads knead rhythmically against his shoulder.

"Nice people," Kurt purrs as he slides into sleep. "Blaine Anderson."

 

*

 

Blaine is surprised to find Kurt already in the kitchen the following morning, even before he makes it to the coffee pot.

"Morning, Blaine. Food, please?" he asks, padding along hunched on all four paws. He knocks against Blaine's legs and smiles all the way to the space where he'd been fed last night.

Blaine has to laugh. Kurt is beautiful and remarkably polite, but still a cat. He fixes them both eggs—Kurt's without salt or pepper and protein pellets again and his own as usual—and after the meal he explains to Kurt that he'll be gone for bedtime that night, but that they have all day until then to relax or play.

"Toys are for children," Kurt informs him, but then quietly proceeds to use one of the scratching pads in the living room until his blunt claws are not so blunt.

"Do you like music?" Blaine asks.

This turns out to be opening a can of worms, as it takes cycling through his entire music collection before he discovers that Kurt loves Broadway musicals. It's almost too much, watching Kurt's tail twitch and his back writhe in inhuman patterns as he rolls around on the carpet to the beat of the music, loving every moment of the songs.

"Good sounds," he announces, after several hours of this, seemingly pleased.

And promptly after, as any cat might, he falls asleep on the couch in a haphazard pile of limbs and dozes the rest of the afternoon away.

 

*

 

Blaine goes about his day as usual, picking up his dry cleaning and buying a few groceries. He picks up the latest box of donation toys while he's there. He usually ends up throwing most of it away—a lot of it is too used to be any good—but with Kurt at home he figures that some of it, at least, will provide a temporary distraction.

Kurt is asleep on the couch in the living room, sprawled on his back, legs and arms spread out in four different directions and his long, thick tail twitching softly between his legs. Blaine sits near the empty space by his head, smiling when his ears twitch and his eyes open.

"Blaine," Kurt says, twisting the upper half of his body over. He sniffs. "Oh, good smell."

He guesses it must be the catnip residue (they don't accept toys with catnip inside, but sometimes one slips in unnoticed, or the smell lingers from contact with other toys), and smiles.

"Hey, Kurt. Yeah, there may be—"

Kurt presses his nose into Blaine's sleeve and inhales deeply. He shivers and his pupils go as wide as saucers. "Oh, Blaine, very good smell." He snuffles from Blaine's sleeve to his hand, nosing at his fingers and sniffing them, then licking out against them. His tongue isn't fully bristled but it's noticeably rougher than a human tongue. "What is that, what is that, hm?"

Blaine blushes. "Catnip. It's—like a spice."

"Delicious," Kurt announces, licking along Blaine's open palm. And then he seems to realize what he's doing. He blinks rapidly, sits up onto his front paws and shakes his ears. "Hm. Not so good, maybe." He looks affronted by his own behavior, and Blaine has to grin.

"I'll throw that one away," he says.

"Smart people. Blaine."

"I've got to get dressed for my party. Are you comfortable sleeping alone here tonight?"

Kurt considers Blaine, his teeth pressed against his lip, then shrugs and nods. "Yes. Just need food, Blaine."

"Let me show you where I'm going to leave everything you'll need, okay?"

Kurt follows him.

 

*

 

The party is a resounding success, and Blaine gets rather spectacularly drunk. He doesn't remember much after the ball drop beyond thankfully not making a total ass of himself, and Sam getting him home in one piece.

The first thing he hears the next morning is, "Funny smells, Blaine. You should be cleaner."

And he realizes that he's curled up in Kurt's bedding and that Kurt is licking the side of his head like a worried mother cat. He would giggle for how it tickles, except that he's wearing nothing but underwear and Kurt is curled around him like a blanket, warm fur and soft skin and twitching tail bracketing him, holding him in place for grooming, and it feels far too good.

"That isn't—I can clean myself, you know that humans don't—"

"Silly people, Blaine," Kurt informs him, licking down the side of his neck. "Never clean like catpeople, so that is very silly to say."

It's the first time that he's ever been irresponsible enough to fall asleep with a hybrid almost entirely naked (he wonders if Sam hadn't guided him in here as a joke) but the consequences have been so comical that he can't bring himself to feel badly.

Of course, there is also the fact that a very attractive bipedal male creature is licking warm, scratchy tracks down his collarbone while holding him with incredible strength.

Kurt is purring faintly. Blaine can feel and hear the gentle rumble against his side.

And then that tongue scrapes across his nipple and he moans, twisting away.

"Okay, Kurt. I think I'm clean enough. Why don't we get you some breakfast, huh?" He's hungover enough to sound unsure of himself and Kurt obviously senses that.

"Humans give food, warm bed, good den, why can't I give something?" he asks, licking down Blaine's trembling belly.

 _Oh, god_ , Blaine thinks. He must be losing it if all it takes to get his heart racing is being licked by a hybrid.

"I appreciate that. But maybe later?" he asks, slowly sitting up. "I'm sure you're hungry."

Kurt sits up with him, head tilted, ears swiveling. "Hm. Food, maybe." As they eat together, Kurt asks, "Fun party?"

"Uh, yeah, it was—a lot of fun. Happy New Year, by the way."

Kurt squints. "Rachel tried to explain this. It seems silly, Blaine. New Year."

Blaine smiles tiredly. "You're right. Humans can be very silly."

Kurt seems pleased by his agreement, tail lashing softly before curling around his paws. He sits up straighter, and Blaine finds himself watching the flex of muscles in his upper arms and shoulders and thighs. His cheeks go hot.

"We should listen to some good sounds," Kurt says, when they're done. "They will make you feel better, Blaine."

Blaine can't help but smile; Kurt is right about that.

 

*

 

After that first weekend, Blaine explains his schedule as best as he can to Kurt, who seems to take it in stride. He knows how to feed himself now, more or less, how to clean up after himself and use the various items in the apartment that Blaine has given him permission to touch.

Blaine begins to look for a permanent home for him, but he has to admit that he's lazy about it—Kurt is rather a pleasure to have at home, it's true, but he's also too mature and fussy at his age for young children, so that narrows Blaine's search.

Not everything is smooth sailing. Kurt is smart and curious, and Blaine loses track of the number of times that he's entered a room to find Kurt stretched to his full length, reaching for something on a high shelf that has caught his eye. Half of the time Blaine only finds out about these attempts after something has been destroyed.

"Why do you put it up so high if it is ruined by the floor when it falls?" Kurt asks, face screwed up with irritation. "Human things are like garbage."

He grows tired of the simple food and protein pellets, so Blaine spends more time than he is used to on cooking things that are both healthy and appropriate for Kurt's stomach and not just unflavored meat or eggs.

He gets stuck in a variety of tiny spaces, yowling angrily until Blaine rescues him and then accusing Blaine of having a "bad den" because of the tightness of the spaces.

He destroys a stack of papers that had not been garbage and then asks Blaine how was he supposed to know the difference between one bit of paper and the next?

All in all, though, they continue to get along, and Kurt learns to stop himself from more destructive or inconvenient acts. Blaine is used to having a hybrid under foot, so with a bit of patience and a lot of rule making they get past these initial bumps in the road.

Kurt is a much faster learner than the hybrids who Blaine has fostered before, though.

One evening he pulls a book down off of a shelf that has a picture of a man morphing into a hybrid on the front.

"What is this?" he asks, curling up at Blaine's feet. "Explain, please, Blaine."

"It's—it's a book that explains how your kind came into being. How you were born."

"In a litter."

Blaine smiles. "Well, yes. But you see—there were no hybrids, at one point. Many years ago. People decided to try to make clones—copies—of humans, and of animals. It was an experiment. They didn't know if they would be able to do it. They failed—but then one day a pack of hybrid mutants escaped a laboratory, and started making litters on their own, and somehow—over time—their litters became more and more like the creatures that the people had tried to make in the laboratory. And soon hybrids were making litters everywhere, perfect blends of humans and animals.”

Kurt puts his head on Blaine's knee. "People are silly, Blaine. But catpeople are smart; of course they made better litters on their own."

Blaine smiles, and puts his fingers behind Kurt's ears to scratch. "They are very smart."

Kurt purrs, eyes drifting shut. "Some people are good, though, Blaine. They give food and touches and dry dens."

A warm, happy rush floods Blaine's chest. He scratches Kurt behind the ears a bit harder, enjoying the deep rumbling purr that he earns, and the flex of Kurt's claws against his jeans.

"But I don't like dogpeople, Blaine," Kurt announces, half-asleep with his head in Blaine's lap. "Promise no dogpeople, okay?"

Blaine laughs, shaking his head, his fingers tangled in Kurt's brown-tipped hair. "No dogpeople. Promise."

 

*

 

Over breakfast one morning Blaine asks, "Tell me about the people you've had, Kurt."

"Which?" Kurt asks, standing tall against the breakfast bar, bent over, back arched and head held high.

"As far back as you can remember. When you were a kitten."

"Oh. Oh, I had—babies. Little people. They were loud and smelly and pinched. But some were nice. They called me silly names and pet my fur. But then they would grow bigger, and their people didn't want to take care of me. So I got new people. When I was a grown cat I got—a boy. Medium sized people. He was my very favorite."

Blaine smiles, writing these things down as Kurt speaks. "What was his name?"

"Andrew," Kurt answers, smiling, whiskers straining forward with pleasure. "He was a very good boy."

Blaine idly puts a question mark beside "no tags or chip" and adds "adoption history?".

"Oh?"

Kurt's tail swishes from side to side. His eyes go soft. "Yes. He was with me all the time. He played with me every minute and gave me the best food and treats even when the bigger people said no. He let me sleep in his den and made cream for me every morning."

Blaine tilts his head. "Cream, every morning?" That seems terrible unhealthy. He makes a mark in the dietary section, frowning.

"Boys do that all the time," Kurt informs him, as if he is woefully uneducated on the subject.

Blaine goes still. "And uh, how did—how did he do that, Kurt?"

Kurt's pink tongue pokes out from between his pointy teeth. He eyes Blaine judgmentally, head tilted. "You are very silly, Blaine. You are a big people; you should know." His eyes go dark again and his tail puffs up softly, swaying behind the curve of his furred hip. "I could teach."

Blaine scribbles "used for sexual activity - consensual?".

"I know—I know what you mean, Kurt, but thank you."

"I don't think. You've never done it for me." He's almost teasing. He tosses his eyes. "Maybe Blaine never learned."

"Tell me more about Andrew. Was he your last person before me?"

Kurt nods, looking bored and sad at the same time. "His people didn't like me. The man hurt me a lot. Then they had my metal taken out and they took me away from their den and they left me alone." He frowns. "Andrew was good people, though."

Blaine writes "physical abuse" and "chip removed by owner" and “abandoned”.

"Did they call you 'Kurt'?"

"No. They used another. I don't remember the word."

"If you could remember that word, that would help us a lot."

Kurt tilts his head. "Okay, Blaine."

If they can locate Kurt's original adoption records it would greatly enhance his adoption options.

Blaine is also concerned about the abuse that Kurt had suffered. It doesn't surprise him, given the conditions that they found Kurt in, but he would do just about anything to locate the people who had abandoned Kurt and press hybrid abuse charges against them.

He has to admit that he is just as curious about Andrew and Kurt's relationship, and how Kurt seems to still have a soft spot for the teenager. Hybrids enjoy non-reproductive sexuality, of course, though it's not exactly acceptable for humans and hybrids to mate—for one, because pregnancy is both possible and incredibly problematic, and for another, because hybrids are usually pets and consent can be an issue. But they are capable of saying no and of fending off humans even before maturity, and even though they don't always have the words to express themselves identically to humans they know when they want and do not want to engage in sex.

Blaine is still blushing from this consideration when Kurt shuffles out of the room watching Blaine over his shoulder, his eyes slitted and his tail and hips twitching side to side.

 

*

 

In time, Kurt recalls the name that he'd been previously adopted under. They use it to look up his adoption history, and a rep from the agency comes and interviews him about the abusive aspects of his past. Blaine is a jittery mess the whole time—hearing Kurt describe how Andrew's father had smacked him around, locked him away from Andrew, and even denied him food and water at times makes him want to find the man and tear into him. He has to settle for abuse charges being filed, gritting his teeth until his jaw aches. Kurt, with predictable hybrid disassociation, merely shrugs and pronounces Andrew's parents "bad people".

With his records restored and his chip swapped to the correct identification number, Kurt will be much easier to adopt out—he would have just been put out there as a stray, otherwise, and strays are harder to place.

But the truth is, the more that Blaine grows to know Kurt, the more trouble he has with the adoption process. He's more critical of potential homes for Kurt than he has been with any of his previous hybrids. He's never felt this way before—Kurt's sense of humor, likes and dislikes, and general habits are so much more than the others that had come before him. In the past, Blaine had hardly interacted with his hybrids, and not out of choice—they simply had no interest in him outside of being fed, taken out, and given things. They would trot off to their rooms in between meals and trips outside with a disinterested flick of their tails, as if he wasn't worth their time.

But Kurt isn't like that. He wants to listen to music and watch television and poke at the laptop, even though he's never been taught how to read, and everything that he learns he wants to talk about with Blaine. He plays with the toys that Blaine brings him even though he pretends that they're inferior or for “children”. He loves sniffing out the scent of catnip or food or cologne on Blaine's skin and clothes. His English gets better by the day, until Blaine begins to stop thinking of him as simply a hybrid and more as a friend.

He feels guilty about this, especially when Sam and Rachel begin to joke about it and eventually start gently accusing him of wanting to adopt Kurt himself.

_You can't keep every foster, Blaine; that's not how it works, remember?_

The problem is that beneath the fur and slightly broken English, there's an intelligent adult male person in there, and Blaine—has no idea why it's taken him so long to figure that out.

 

*

 

The week that the winter cold finally snaps, Blaine gets sick.

"There should be a rule against that," he says to Rachel, who laughs and kisses his cheek and brings him soup.

Kurt is adorably flustered by this turn of events; he's not familiar with human illnesses and doesn't understand what is wrong with Blaine.

At first, he's convinced that Blaine has been replaced by a different version of Blaine who is Not His Blaine, because he smells different. And then he's convinced that Blaine is dying and frets even harder, bringing him tissues and cough drops and blankets in random arrangements, thinking that the presence of all of these items in some magical combination will cure Blaine, as Rachel and Sam keep bringing them to him. When none of this works, not even bringing Blaine Kurt's favorite chew doll or a plate of raw chicken liver, he gives up and decides to play the role of blanket, curling up over Blaine's legs or lap every time that he allows it.

"You are a silly, silly person, Blaine. Be better!" he insists, rubbing the hinge of his jaw all over Blaine's legs. "Trying to make you smell like mine is very much work when you're like this. It's mean of you. But if I don't do this then you smell bad."

Blaine giggles—which sets off a coughing jog, which makes him sneeze six times.

Kurt frowns at him, sits up and then over his lap and shakes him. "Be better," he says, again, rather authoritatively.

"Honey, when you figure out how to make that work, you let me know. We'll be famous and rich."

"Blaine, your brain is sick, too. You make no sense."

Blaine smiles, sinking his fingers into the thick, luxurious fur around Kurt's head. "Thank you for worrying. It's really sweet."

"No," Kurt says, pouting dramatically, "it's smelly."

When Blaine finally recovers, that first hot shower and meal of broth and crackers are like heaven on Earth—Kurt sleeps right through it, naturally, but is up by late afternoon, pouncing Blaine at the kitchen table and rubbing his jaw all over Blaine's shoulder.

"You're back," he breathes happily, tail swishing between the table's legs. "Oh, it is nice to smell you again."

Cuddly behavior had seemed normal while he'd been sick—it had been comfort, on a very basic, animal level, and Kurt had had no idea how to react to him but to touch him and smell him and fuss, but now that he's feeling like himself again being close just feels like too much. Kurt perched on his thighs, all long soft limbs and sweet-smelling dander and that rough pink tongue dropping cat kisses across his morning scruff feels better than it should.

"Thanks," he says, putting down his napkin and gently petting Kurt's back. "I feel much better."

Kurt purrs.

 

*

 

Later that night, Kurt crawls into his bedroom and swats at the base of his blanket until he rolls over and peeks over the side of the bed.

"Blaine, Blaine, Blaine."

Blaine smiles at that eager expression. "Yeah?"

"Can I sleep with?"

"What's the matter with your room? Too cold? Too hot?"

"I want to make sure you stay better," Kurt says. "It was bad when you smelled."

Blaine chuckles. He's half-asleep and not much concerned. "Sure. Just—no claws, and no noise, okay?"

"Promise."

Kurt uses his own room for play and daytime napping, but for nighttime sleeping he curls up at the foot of Blaine's bed. And then, a few nights later, he sprawls across the open space opposite Blaine. And then a few nights after that, Blaine begins to feel the warmth of his body just inches away. And finally he's waking up with Kurt's tail or arm or leg flung over his body, keeping him close and almost too warm under the bedding.

One morning he wakes up with Kurt curled around his pelvis like a garland, arms and fingers and fur and soft breathing. The sinuous slope of Kurt's spine twists under his hand, and he can feel the warm puff of Kurt's breath over his belly hairs.

"Mm, Blaine," Kurt murmurs from under the blankets, dragging the flat of his rough tongue down Blaine's stomach.

"K-Kurt?"

"Good smells," he says, nosing down Blaine's happy trail.

"Um, d-don't—"

Wet nose and warm breath and the drag of fur down the front of his boxers. Blaine freezes, hands hovering above Kurt's form. He's paralyzed with syrupy slow morning arousal and guilt.

"Never make cream for me," Kurt growls, soft and lazy, dragging his tongue up Blaine's clothed erection; nerves fire that haven't fired in a long time.

"Kurt," Blaine moans, as Kurt drags the underwear down around his thighs. Blaine flicks the blanket off of them, sucking in a breath at the sight of Kurt fur-ruffled and wide-eyed, staring up at him from between his legs, hovering over his straining erection. "Don't."

"Why?" Kurt asks, head tilting. "Boys do this. It's good." His eyes go darker. He licks his lips.

"You don't have to, I mean, that's not—"

Kurt winds his long, agile tongue around the head of Blaine's cock, and wraps his webbed paw-hand around the shaft. Between the two he can cover Blaine's cock completely—and then, as if that weren't enough, his tongue executes a slow, wet, circular drag and his paw pads twist up and down and Blaine's cock dribbles wet over his pale lips and Blaine whines, his hips twitching up.

"Oh, god," he moans. It's so much sensation, so fast.

"I show you how," Kurt announces, almost haughtily, and begins jerking Blaine off into his mouth.

The feeling of being entirely enveloped, but not by a mouth, is overwhelming—it's like being put through a wringer of softest silk, only it's a grip, a constant writhing grip, topped off by the wet searching length of Kurt's tongue. Blaine drowns in guilt as much as pleasure, his hips rocking into Kurt's touch, his head thrown back and his pulse hammering.

Eventually, he gives in, threads his fingers through the hair in between Kurt's ears and holds on.

"Kurt," he moans, "I'm close."

Kurt guides the head of Blaine's cock between his pale lips, careful to keep it well away from his teeth, and begins stroking him faster, flickering the very tip of his tongue into the gaping slit there.

"Mm, yes, you learn," Kurt murmurs, sex-soft and powerful, "learn to give kitty the cream, hm? Good person—being good for me."

"Oh my god," Blaine gasps as he comes, gushing pearly white and messy into Kurt's mouth.

It's so intense that he can't even keep his eyes open, and by the time that he cracks his lids Kurt is dragging that beautiful tongue all over him, licking him clean and making him throb and dribble through the aftershocks.

Kurt crawls up his body, morning sunlight glowing through his fur, his tail risen behind him, his ears erect, and licks across his mouth. It's a shock—and then he tucks his lips over his teeth and tongue and closes his mouth and kisses Blaine as a human would, soft and slow.

"Andrew taught me," he explains, kissing Blaine again and again, and Blaine can't stop himself from reaching up and wrapping his arms around Kurt's neck and then flattening his hands over Kurt's rippling shoulders to pull him closer, to kiss him harder. His lips feel so perfect, and each brush of them sends warm shivering waves of sensation down Blaine's body.

"You—you want—this is what you want?" he asks, shaking, because Kurt's kisses may actually be doing more to wreck him than that blowjob had, and he's terrified by the depth of the feeling.

"I don't do things I don't want, Blaine," Kurt sniffs, a sweet smile betraying his lofty gaze. "You are my favorite person."

"You're mine, too," Blaine whispers, rubbing the tip of his nose across Kurt's wet, pink one.

 

*

 

After that, Kurt's attitude toward Blaine becomes more—focused. Whenever Blaine comes home he asks for details about where Blaine had gone and who he had been with. If Blaine so much as sneezes or shivers Kurt fills his hands with cough medicine and pushes him into bed. If Blaine has company, Kurt is never far. And at all times Kurt obsessively marks him—rubs the hinge of his jaw over Blaine's arms and legs and face, and complains that he can't groom Blaine's curls because the product he uses makes them taste bad.

Blaine knows that it's a mistake, letting Kurt get attached in this way. He's fostered clingy hybrids before—but this isn't just clinging. Kurt is developing ideas about their relationship that openly contradict Blaine's goal of finding him a new family. Rachel has been bugging Blaine about taking new fosters, has asked if he needs help finding Kurt a home, and Blaine's excuses are beginning to wear thin. He tells himself and Rachel that he just hasn't found the right people yet, but he knows in his heart that he's passed over several candidates that would have suited Kurt perfectly fine. It's just that no one seems good enough for Kurt; he deserves more than “fine”.

That's Blaine's story and he's sticking to it.

 

*

 

The first time that he wakes up to Kurt on top of him, lightly rubbing their cocks together, is a shock. He's never seen a hybrid this way, pupils blow, fur bristling, and the heavy sag of a swollen, bright red cock gently oozing thin pre-come pressed against his underwear. And Kurt, breathing deeply but rapidly against his neck, rocking and rocking and rocking.

"Touch, Blaine," he whimpers, back bending, ass and tail rising up behind him.

He can't very well refuse, not when Kurt has been waking him up with his tongue for weeks. It's just—new, and so very, very wrong, but knowing that doesn't stop him from letting it happen.

He waits too long to fulfill the request; Kurt begins rolling his hips faster. "Blaine—oh, oh, oh—" And his pelvis freezes and his cock throbs visibly and he comes all over Blaine's boxers, shaking, hair standing on end, tail stiff and twitching in midair, pleasure softening his facial features.

"Sorry," he says, throatily. "Too long." He ducks down and begins licking everywhere. When Blaine makes a surprised noise he adds, "Cleaning, silly," and licks Blaine's skin and underwear free of his ejaculate. By the time that he's done Blaine is tenting his boxers, overwhelmed by all of the friction.

Kurt surprises him yet again by laying down on top of him and kissing him until his face is burned pink from the scratch of his facial hair, until he's writhing and out of breath in return.

"You made me wait," he says, playfully rutting his warm, hard belly against Blaine's cock. "I make you wait?"

Blaine huffs out a chuckle. "I guess that's only fair." He scratches his fingertips down the thick hair that runs along Kurt's spine, all the way to the base of his tail. Kurt's ass rises against his hand.

"Ahhh," he moans, shivering, then begins to vibrate with purrs, "trying to be nice, make me go faster?" He works a thick, hard thigh between Blaine's legs and pins his cock, breathing faster. "Hard hot and so strong, like it, like your flesh, want to hear you make noises—"

Blaine makes those noises, quite unconsciously, bucking up against Kurt's leg. "Oh, god, yes, let me come," he gasps, clutching fur.

"Come," Kurt parrots, testing the word against the back of his teeth. "Come. Hmm. This is what you call it? The make and the cream?"

"Y-yes, I—" He's so close.

"Such good smells," Kurt moans, pressing into him, holding him down with strong, muscled forearms and legs, until all he can do is just let Kurt grind against him, let Kurt take him there.

"Please," he groans, and then Kurt's fingers squeeze the head of his cock. "Kurt."

"I can drink it?"

Blaine's body spasms with heat as the orgasm coils. "Yeah, god, yeah, you can," and Kurt disappears under the blankets, wraps his warm, silky lips around the tip of Blaine's cock and Blaine comes inside of his mouth with a sob. The blinding recoil leaves Blaine arching off of the bed, chest heaving.

Kurt rolls them over after the moment has passed, dragging Blaine on top of him. "Sleepy Blaine."

"Having an orgasm can do that," he says, smiling. He can't help but stare down curiously at the half-shrunken erection on Kurt's belly. He's never seen it out of its sheath before. It's no different than any human cock that he's seen, aside from the more vibrant color. "Do—do catpeople—have more than one, sometimes?" He scratches his fingernails down Kurt's torso.

"Mm, swell and spill, more than one time quick, yes, I can do that. If I want to."

Aching to touch, Blaine wraps his fingers around Kurt's cock and squeezes it. "Do you want to?"

Kurt's chest rumbles with pleasure. His hips roll up into Blaine's hand. "Touch harder, Blaine."

Blaine's heart is pounding so fiercely that he can feel it in his fingers as he strokes Kurt's cock to full hardness. The way that it can just—do that again, so soon, makes him throb with desire. He's never—never felt a hybrid this way before, and he has so many questions, but here and now with Kurt's larger than average member fattening up in his hand, all he can think about it is how badly he wants to taste it, to feel it, to learn every inch of it. God, he's huge.

"Shaking," Kurt observes, panting and wriggling himself.

"I'm okay," Blaine answers, tugging faster as Kurt's cock weeps fluid all over his hand. "You're—I want to touch you, Kurt, so much." His mouth fills with saliva. "May I—um. Put you in my mouth?"

The flesh in his hand gushes afresh, and Kurt's pupils widen. "Yes, Blaine."

What had seemed large reveals itself as gigantic once Blaine tries to fit his mouth around it. He shakes with arousal; he's never had something so impressive in bed before, and the fact that he can only get half of it in his mouth excites him to the point of near panic. He's always had a sort of thing for—size, and Kurt swelling to fill every inch of his mouth makes his spent cock twitch.

Kurt tastes no different than a human but he does give off a lot of fluid, substantially more than Blaine is used to, and before long Blaine's chin and neck are wet with the excess that leaks out of the corners of his mouth. It makes everything so slippery, so messy; he closes his eyes and relaxes his throat and sucks, something blindly hungry unfolding inside of him, a base desire for _cock_ , for _more_ , for _fuck my throat, give it to me_ , and he doesn't need to say anything. It's like Kurt just knows. Kurt slides a paw around the back of his head and holds him still and uses his mouth with snarly little mewls, making his jaw hurt and his lips ache and his throat spasm. He's hard within minutes, breathing frantically through his nose and rutting down against the bed.

Kurt lets him breathe halfway through and he shudders through the panting, licking his mouth clean and jacking the huge flesh pulsing in his grip.

"God, I love your cock," he confesses, almost embarrassed.

"It will be too much for you to drink, yes?" Kurt asks, breathing heavily.

"Let me try," Blaine answers, licking over the head, the glans, and the slit hungrily.

Kurt's eyes slide shut. "Mm," he hums, and presses Blaine's mouth down.

All it takes after that are a few hard strokes and Blaine's swollen lips sucking at the head and Kurt growls and comes—and he is correct, there's no way that Blaine can swallow it all. But he wraps his lips tight around Kurt and tries anyway, and for every gulp that makes it down his throat there are three that gush down and over his chin, splashing on the bed, on Kurt's thighs, and down Blaine's forearms. Blaine thinks that if Kurt's come had been any thicker, he wouldn't have been able to swallow even as much as he had.

Kurt makes him sit patiently still after and licks them both clean. He's painfully hard again, but he doesn't say anything.

"Humans can do this, too, I notice," Kurt says, grinning coyly and pressing a hand to Blaine's cock. "Did you think you could not?"

"Oh, god, Kurt, please," Blaine gasps.

And he lets Kurt take over, yet again.

 

*

 

It all makes sense about a week later.

And it hurts.

Blaine comes home from an afternoon with a friend and finds Kurt crazed and feverish, pawing his legs before he even gets past the coat rack or unties his shoes. Kurt rises on his haunches and licks Blaine's crotch and paws at his fly and growls, "Blaine, now."

They have been having pretty fantastic sex, but this isn't typical behavior.

"Kurt? Are you okay, honey?" he asks, tipping Kurt's face in his hands to check his pupils and the pulse hammering beneath his jaw.

"Need," he whines, walking circles around Blaine's legs, tugging at his clothes, the tips of his claws catching heedlessly on the fabric.

Concerned and alarmed, Blaine gets him to sit still barely long enough to take his temperature, and holds him at arm's length for an even quicker glance through his file. He checks the dates. The timing lines up. Of course. Why hadn't he noticed it before? Kurt's desire for sex, his need for Blaine to be "his"...Kurt is in heat, has been going into heat for weeks.

Blaine's heart falls.

All of that intimacy—all because of the heat. It had had nothing to do with Kurt desiring him. How stupid of him to think that it had. He's never had a hybrid go into heat in his house before but even so, he should have been able to read the signs.

He's been blinded by his own feelings. He's been so selfish.

He leads Kurt into his room and then brings him the "tools" from the kit he has stored in the linen closet—items specifically designed to penetrate male cat hybrids in order to satisfy their need during the heat. The disappointed look that Kurt gives him when he explains their purpose breaks his heart.

"Why toys?" Kurt asks, frowning and reaching for him. "Blaine, this is silly." It takes a lot out of him to stand on his hind legs but he does it, puts his paws on Blaine's face and tugs him into a very human kiss. "I don't want cold things. Please." He tugs Blaine's shirt from his pants, flicks Blaine's fly open and lowers the zipper, nuzzling into the softness of Blaine's throat. "Good hard healthy male flesh, yes? For me. All for me, you promise?" His legs tremble. "So weak. Feel bad. Please, Blaine? Make it feel better." He crumples to the floor and crawls into his blanket nest with a pained whimper.

Blaine watches him rut his cock along the lumpy blankets. Watches his tail flick side to side and then up and over his back, exposing the smooth slope of his buttocks and thighs, and—of course, the presentation of that swollen, pink, dripping pucker, winking open and shut, framed by furry balls which are swollen tight and high between his legs.

Blaine bites his lip to suppress the moan that rises unbidden in his throat.

The temptation is nearly unbearable. Weeks of nothing but taking pleasure, receiving pleasure—and now this offering, and Blaine knows that if he does this, he isn't going to want to stop.

So he decides. If he does this for Kurt now, he will find Kurt a family before the month is out, and he will let him go. He's been completely self-absorbed in allowing Kurt to love him, and if he does this last thing that has to be the end of it. He'll set it right, as soon as Kurt is taken care of.

Shaking, he kneels on the blankets, which are already smeared with Kurt's fluids. Kurt is not only leaking from his cock but from his needy entrance, which is glistening with the viscous lubrication.

"Sweetheart," he whispers, stroking Kurt's cheeks apart. "Oh, honey, were you like this all day?"

Kurt nods, whimpering, and thrusts back. "Inside, Blaine. Please. Please please please."

Blaine thumbs his pants down around his thighs. "Does it have to be like this? Can you—roll over onto your back?"

He does, and Blaine can't say whether it's better or worse, that soft fur, those beaded nipples and the hungry desperation on Kurt's face all displayed so wantonly—but he wants to see Kurt. He needs to see him, to connect with him during this intimacy.

It will be the first and last time, after all.

He reaches between Kurt's legs, presses his tail to one side, and finds him soft and clenching and slick. He shudders. His cock throbs and hardens, and Kurt lets out a high-pitched whimper at the sight of it.

"Mate with me, Blaine," he moans, eyes black with pupil. "Give it. Please. Need full, need hard, inside, please." As Blaine gently fingers him he continues to babble, "Good bonding, me and you, good—good, oh, yes, there—good litters, yes? Oh, Blaine, need your seed, want to be full of your little ones—"

Blaine's cock throbs at every word despite the fact that he knows they can't get pregnant, his body shaking like a leaf as he edges one and then two and then three and finally four fingers inside of Kurt's clenching heat. "Shh, let me feel you, love. Let me make sure you're ready."

"Now now now, Blaine, Blaine—body must be full of it, full of you, please no playing, please give me, take—take, take, take, perfect fit for you."

He's so beautiful spread out on his back like this, bent furry legs and begging arms, long pale neck and angelic face—those eyes, burning with desire and affection, his body opening up, welcoming Blaine inside. Blaine has no doubt that given time he could work his entire hand inside of Kurt but he stops at four fingers, wiping them dry on the blankets and replacing them with the head of his cock.

Kurt makes noises that are as frightening as they are encouraging. Blaine keeps an eye on his claws, trembling with the effort of focusing as he traces Kurt's quivering rim with his cock.

"Blaine," Kurt moans, lifting his ass desperately.

"I'm here," he whispers as he presses forward. "Let me in, sweetheart."

"Oh—oh oh oh oh yes—"

God, it's tight. It's tight and wet and so hot inside.

"Oh, god, Kurt, you're—"

"Hard." He can't wrap his legs correctly around Blaine so he lifts them instead, which allows Blaine deeper and draws his muscled, round cheeks tightly around Blaine at the same time. His voice is entirely growl when it comes next. "More flesh, more speed, now now now, Blaine." With every press inside, Kurt's cock spurts a tiny jolt of clear fluid over his smooth belly. His hips rock up and forward, encouraging Blaine to go deeper.

And despite the urgency, despite the necessary rush, despite the lewd slap of wet flesh into even wetter flesh, despite the pornographic pleasure of watching Kurt's tight, swollen hole forced to take his cock, over and over, there is a sweet desperate longing in Kurt's eyes, a sense of completion singing between them that Blaine knows has nothing to do with simple satisfaction but rather with the fact that it's them coming together.

He isn't sure whether it's because he loves Kurt, or Kurt loves him, but there's love. There's so much ill-advised, nonsensical love that he can't breathe, he can't think, he can't do anything but hold Kurt's legs up and fuck him as hard and fast as he needs to be fucked. He can't do anything but fist Kurt's cock and jerk it until he comes, over and over and over again, until his fur is soaked and the room smells like it and Blaine has put off coming a half dozen times.

Kurt is just as tight as he was on the first stroke, and his body is blazing hot, squeezing Blaine's cock like a fist. But he is also limp with pleasure now, melted over his blankets instead of a tense knot atop them. His eyes are slitted shut and his tongue is lazily dragging over his lips and his claws are digging happily into the carpet. He's content.

"Blaine," he moans, drawing out the syllables. "Mm, good mating," he hums, pelvis writhing. "Hard pulsing flesh. Feels very good." His muscles flutter and clench, work themselves around Blaine's cock with obvious pleasure.

"Kurt," Blaine moans.

"Would have your kittens," Kurt mumbles, staring down at Blaine's cock pushing in and out of his body. "Would let you make me swollen and big with them, Blaine." He moans, claws dragging along the floor as his spine flexes. "Oh, yes. Ready for come. Ready ready ready for—wet. Inside. You are close."

"Yeah," Blaine pants, staring, enthralled by the sight of Kurt's ass hungrily swallowing around him. "Oh, god, I—I need to come."

"Mine," Kurt whimpers, clenching up tight. "And I am yours."

Blaine comes so hard that shapes explode behind his eyelids. Kurt's words ricochet inside of him even as he pulses, shooting lush spurt after spurt deep inside of Kurt's body.

His heart feels like it's a beat away from exploding inside of his chest. So much misplaced longing and so much pain, and just as much pleasure, and that hurts more than anything else.

They curl up together on the dry side of the blanket nest in a heap of fur and limbs and skin, cooling and drying off. Blaine feels like overcooked noodles set atop a useless, flattened brain.

Of course, it's not that simple.

Kurt's heat will last for days. Blaine knows this. Knowing it and being the recipient of its focus are two different things, he learns.

Twelve hours later he's popping a Viagra (thanking his lucky stars for that gag gift), out of breath and struggling to keep up because Kurt doesn't understand why he can't get hard every other hour without difficulty.

(He calls in sick to the theater, apologizing profusely for the short notice with his eyes glued to Kurt across the room, fingering himself open and leaking all over the carpet.)

Blaine doesn't even remember what being dry or turned off had felt like.

Kurt straddles his lap on the couch and bounces on his cock for minutes at a time, often coming without a touch, without even his involvement. It's the same at the kitchen table during meals, in the shower, and even once on the fire escape out back in the cool night air, Kurt bent over the railing with Blaine fucking him from behind, heart in his throat as he rushed toward orgasm because anyone could see. And again over the kitchen counter, the stereo, the bathroom counter, and in the foyer next to the coat rack with Kurt on his hands and knees, scraping the grout from in between the tiles with his claws. Blaine wakes up to Kurt pushing his cock inside of himself in the dead of night, squatting over his body and hissing as he sits down on it, calling out Blaine's name and going as tight as a drum around him.

By the fourth day, Blaine's dick feels like it's one stroke away from falling off, and he is actually beginning to be sickened by the smell of his own semen and sweat and the musky tinge to Kurt's fur when he's in heat. He's thankful that the fluids that Kurt produces seem to have no apparent odor, otherwise they'd never escape it again. There isn't a surface of the apartment that hasn't been splashed or smeared or dripped on by it now.

The heat ends gradually over the course of about twelve hours on the fifth day.

Blaine wakes up alone in the middle of the night, tense and unhappy because he has become so used to Kurt just—being there, either for post-coital cuddling or to use his cock every few hours. He finds Kurt dead to the world in a pile of blankets in his own room, snoring like a buzz saw, and almost collapses with relief. It's over. Thank god.

He smooths medicated lotion over himself, puts on a soft pair of underwear, and stops just short of verbally apologizing to his manhood before falling into a coma-like sleep himself.

 

*

 

Kurt is lethargic and avoidant the week after his heat, and Blaine takes the opportunity to fulfill the promise that he'd made to himself.

He finds Kurt a potential home—an elderly couple who are patrons and supporters of local theater as well as a performing arts program at a nearby high school. They have a modern sense of style and a sarcastic sense of humor and are looking for a hybrid who won't mind accompanying them to the theater and socially around town.

He introduces Kurt to them and they hit it off instantly; Kurt makes them laugh and declares them "very smart, good people", and when Blaine asks Kurt if he would like to spend more time with them and he says yes, Blaine fills out the paperwork. He knows as soon as he emails the PDFs to Rachel that it's a mistake, but it's done. It had to be done.

He already feels sick.

The day before they come to pick Kurt up, Blaine feeds him his favorite breakfast.

"It's a special day tomorrow, you know that, right?" Kurt tilts his head. "Greg and Lanna are coming to take you to your new home. Remember? We talked about it last week."

"For a visit, yes.”

Blaine sighs. Kurt often hears what he wants to hear when they talk about things not related to the two of them or an immediate action. "For a new den."

"A new den for me and you,” Kurt says, ears twitching.

He looks down at his empty plate. "For you, Kurt. Just for you. New people and a new home. Just like I promised when you came to visit with me that first night." His chest aches with pain as he says the words—he knows that he isn't being fair. Treating Kurt like any other hybrid isn't fair, not after what they've become to each other. But he doesn't know how else to end it.

Kurt's ears flatten against his head. His tail puffs up. "That was before, Blaine."

Blaine scrapes his fork along his plate, hands shaking. "Kurt. No."

"Blaine. Blaine, you are—wrong." Kurt trembles, his throat vibrating with it, and stands. "You are—my mate, Blaine. We don't have separate dens. That is wrong."

"I'm your foster," Blaine breathes, throat frozen with the lie. "You know what that means."

"You were foster. You're mate now." Kurt's face crumbles. "Blaine. What do you do this for? I am a good mate. I give you grooming and pleasure and smiles—"

Blaine's eyes fill with tears. He stands, rushing to put the breakfast bar between them, his hands full of dishes that he almost breaks; they fall out of his hands and into the sink at the last second because he quite literally loses control of his grip. He braces his trembling fingers against the edge of the sink, and almost breaks down entirely when Kurt comes up behind him, hugs him around the waist and pulls him in. He feels so horrible and small and alive in Kurt's arms.

"We can't do this," he says, miserably. "If they find out—it's just not right, Kurt."

"Who is they, and how they find—"

"I volunteer for this foster program. Everything I do for it is recorded and watched by the people in charge. Even if I adopted you myself, I could never treat you as more than a—a pet. I couldn't help you go to school or get a job or be—be like me, outside in the world. You'd just—be here, always, and I can't—"

"This makes you sad," Kurt says, slowly. "That I can't be a person like you? But what does that matter? I love Blaine because he is Blaine. You don't love Kurt because he is Kurt?"

Blaine feels tears on his face and wipes them away with trembling fingers. "It would have to be a secret. Do you want to hide, all the time, pretend? Wouldn't that make you sad?"

"All I hear is that you need me to be more like you to have me as a mate, to feel right for this," Kurt says, pulling away. "That makes me sad. Not the other. You— _you_ are making me sad.”

"Kurt—wait."

He hears Kurt's door slam shut. The noise reverberates through the silent apartment.

 

*

 

Blaine has Rachel do the adoption. It's the coward's way out, and he knows it. Knows it and intends to live with it, but then he visits her later that month and loses it, breaks down on her couch after one too many glasses of wine and confesses everything while simultaneously begging her to tell him what Kurt had done and said throughout the process.

Shocked, she replies, "He was actually—eager to go, I think. He seemed a little sad, though."

"Of course he was," Blaine says, crying. "I all but told him he wasn't human enough to be my—my mate."

She watches him, feet jiggling, fingers twitching, looking upset as well as concerned. "Blaine, it's—it's a huge no no." It's not illegal, but it is highly taboo.

"I know about the studies, Rach, I just," Blaine says, digging his fingers into his hair. "It feels like I'm going insane, some days. I know the way that people would look at us if they knew. I know how impossible it would be. But I love him. Every time I start out on that mental journey to remind myself that I made the right choice that's the last stop, every time, no matter what route I take. I love him. I love the way he thinks and the way he moves and the way he kisses me. I love how he sees the world and what he sees when he looks—looks at me." He bows his head, voice breaking on that last pause, his fingers clenched against his chest, and Rachel sits closer.

"Oh, honey. You're head over heels."

"I don't even go home anymore," he says. "I go over to Sam's or out with the crew or just rehearse until my body can't take it anymore. Every inch of that apartment reminds me of him."

"You need to talk to him. You could do the thirty day visit?" she asks.

"You'd let me? After what I just told you?"

She frowns. "Don't be a doofus. You aren't the first person in the world to fall for a hybrid. And—he can always just tell you to go away, you know. He's not exactly the subtle type. So why not?"

"You don't think it's—weird?"

"Of course I think it's weird. He's a catperson and you're a Broadway star." Blaine chokes on a semi-hysterical laugh. "But you seem genuine and maybe, if nothing else, closure will get your head out of the sand." She smiles, playfully raising her eyebrows. "And then one day when you realize that we are clearly made for each other, you'll be single and free and ready for my love."

It's been a running joke between them since kissing her once in high school had dispelled any confusion that he'd had about his sexuality.

He smiles, kisses her cheek and takes a deep breath. "Email me the address?"

"First thing tomorrow," she promises.

 

*

 

The first thing that he thinks when he sees Kurt is that Kurt looks happy. He's wearing a pair of custom tailored pants with fancy hems lined with sequins and he moves in such a way so as to make sure that they shimmer with every step. He's obviously been to a professional groomer; his fur is neat and trimmed and shining clean. He looks like he's put on weight and his eyes are as clear as sea-colored glass.

Blaine smiles at him, then redirects his attention to Kurt's owners. They chat for a while over pound cake and tea, and then leave Kurt alone with Blaine for their one on one portion of the evaluation. The moment that the door closes behind them Kurt sits easily in the chair opposite Blaine's, surprising him.

He shrugs, watching Blaine. "They think it's silly for me to sit on the floor. I told them if they wanted me to sit on their chairs they had better have comfortable ones."

Blaine's chest floods with affectionate longing. God, how he has missed Kurt. "Let me guess. They do whatever you ask."

"They are good people, Blaine," Kurt answers, as if that answers that, with a cunning smile on his face.

Blaine smiles, letting the silence settle around them before he goes on. "I—I understand if you're upset with me."

"Very much upset, Blaine. More; I am angry with you," Kurt replies, ears flattening just a little. "You don't understand what I said, not at all, and you hurt me." He presses a hand to his chest and then his temple.

Guilt, spiky and horrible, spears Blaine's belly. "You're right. I hurt you. And that was wrong, and—it was a lie, too." Kurt tilts his head. Blaine uses the momentary softening to reach out and take Kurt's paw in his hand. "I reacted the way I did because I was scared. Scared that what we were doing was just—because of your heat. Because we grew attached. But then—more scared of what other people might think of me if they knew. Embarrassed of my feelings for you."

Kurt's eyes flick over Blaine's face as he listens. He takes a moment to absorb what Blaine has said, and then his ears twitch and his tail switches from left to right down the back of the chair.

"I see," he says, carefully. "Heat makes catpeople not think well—but I chose to mate with you. I could use the toys but I didn't." He smiles, looking at Blaine through downcast eyes. "I wanted you, Blaine. You. You are special." He exhales, tangling their fingers together, careful to keep his claws retracted. "But this other thing. I know why you say. I talked to Lanna. She come to tell me about Andrew's people being in trouble for what they did to me. We talked a lot of words. I confess to her about how I made you my mate."

Blaine's heart thuds in his throat. "What—what did she say?"

"She says her son mated with a hybrid. They made puppies together—almost didn't live, because most of the time person and hybrid babies die." He smiles sheepishly. "She told that two boys can't make litters. Very silly of me, I know, but I understand now. She says her son and this girl dogperson, they have a family now. They pretend. And hide. Lanna says is hard—especially at hol—holi—"

"Holidays?"

Kurt nods. "Party days. Family days. Hard for them. But—she says to me, love and mating more important than what persons think. That what we feel inside matters more important. That if—if we mate well, we can do anything together. Keep safe and happy and groomed and warm. Together. Even if one is cold or sick or hungry, the other can help. Forever. Always.”

Blaine's face twists up with emotion. "Oh, Kurt. She's right. And I am so sorry for what I did to you."

Kurt watches him, and then narrows his eyes slightly. "But I am still mad at you, Blaine Anderson. And I like these people—they take me to theater show and music places and give me pretty fur to wear and let me do whatever I like." He puffs up a bit. "Their food is very, very nice, also.”

"I want you to be happy," Blaine replies, smiling. "So if you are—I won't—ask anything of you, but. Would Lanna mind you and I maybe seeing each other sometimes? Visits? Here or at my house?"

"She said I could do this, if I want," Kurt answers evasively, a little teasing smile tugging at his lips. "I do not know. Maybe you fill out visit paperwork? And I think about it."

Blaine laughs, shaking his head. "Kurt. I'll do whatever you want. Just please—give me a chance to make it up to you? I love you so much."

Kurt's blue-green eyes meet his across the table. "I know this," he says, tugging Blaine out of his chair and onto his furry knee. He cups Blaine's face in his wide paws and kisses the corner of his mouth. "I love, too. But we start from the beginning. Visit and eat nice food and see theater and cuddle in blankets and maybe—maybe we know each other even better. Love more. And no lie or running away this time."

Blaine exhales, pressing their foreheads together. "You are so much better at this than I am. Yes. Please."

"Silly person. But even that I love. I love all of my mate. Even though he is very silly and his food is not the best."

Giggling, Blaine presses his face into Kurt's neck. "Maybe you can teach me."

"Maybe. Lots to teach. Many visits, I think," Kurt says, gathering Blaine into his arms.

"Many," Blaine agrees, and lets his heart trust.


End file.
